A Handy Guide to Rey’s Origin

Immediately after I saw “The Force Awakens” I posted a theory to Twitter about Rey’s origins that I have since been refining. Now that The Last Jedi is out, I am even more certain that this theory is correct and will expand on it below. As I will go into some very specific details of both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, this post will be full of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen The Last Jedi yet, be gone.

Question: Who are Rey’s parents?

Answer: She doesn’t have any. Rey is a Luke Skywalker “clone” made from the cells of his severed hand.

“But Mr. Hashtagonist, Mr. Hashtagonist, in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren tells her that her parents are junkers who sold her off for drinking money!”

Yes Internet, Kylo tries to make her believe she is nobody, which is exactly what she needs to hear to join him at the head of his new Empire. Also, he’s probably lying. Also, they might have been caretakers AT BEST!

To explain why she’s actually a hand-me-down (HA!) we have to look at several clues (evidence) and you’ll see how it all makes sense in the hand..ehm…end.

The Vision

In The Force Awakens we are treated to a scene where Rey receives a “Calling” from Luke’s original Lightsaber. When she finds it and touches it, she is overwhelmed by visions that seem to come from both the past and the future.

Before we dive into this, let it be said that Lightsaber’s “Calling out” is something new and we are just expected to believe that is a Force thing. However, I believe it calls out specifically to Rey because the blade “recognizes” it’s owner’s Force Signature (I just made up that term).

SO here’s the important part, at 0:50 in the clip above we see this image of Luke’s brand new Mecha-hand. It’s not just a picture of Luke, it deliberately pans to Mecha-Hand, which seems to function as a reminder that Luke lost his hand in the original trilogy.

Why is it a Mecha-Hand though? We know that in the OT he receives a highly sophisticated hand that is indistinguishable from a regular human hand. The director made a choice to turn his hand into something mechanical because it is important for the audience to be reminded of Luke’s missing hand.

Why? Because the hand is signific…hand.

That’s some sweet hand tech they had 30 years ago…

Later when we see Luke on the Island, the camera work again specifically shows us Luke’s Mech-Hand just to drive home that we need to pay attention to that detail.

Cloning the Hand

Now that we have established that Luke’s hand is import…hand. It’s time to dig into the nonsense that they somehow FOUND the hand, knew it belonged to a SUPER IMPORTANT Jedi and then just decided to clone it willy-nilly.

Let’s break that down.

It is established within The Force Awakens that the Lightsaber that Luke loses during his fight with Vader has been retrieved. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the hand that held the Saber was also at least found and/or retrieved.

The hand is still holding the Lightsaber when it falls down the chute

“But Mr. Hashtagonist, Mr. Hashtagonist, that takes quite a leap to get to “Rey is a Clone made of that hand”

Well, actually THE INTERNET, the retrieval of Luke’s hand is a whole storyline in the Star Wars EU.
Vader personally goes down to the garbage disposal, Force Chokes some blue collar aliens and claims the Lightsaber AND the hand as a “prize”.

I wonder what they did with that hand, though….OH SHIT THEY MADE A CLONE NAMED LUUKE SKYWALKER

A synopsis of that storyline below:

Do you need a moment to catch your breath?

A Revitalized Clone Program

The biggest argument against my own theory is that Rey OBVIOUSLY doesn’t look like Luke (HA!).
What we have seen from “Attack of the Clones” all clones look identical so Rey couldn’t possibly be a clone. However, since we have skipped a LOT of time since those early cloning methods (and it’s problems) I am willing to believe that The First Order has mastered or at least improved cloning techniques since then. I mean, these are the guys that invented the plot-convenient “Hyperspace Tracking”.

While clones don’t seem to be part of the storyline in either The Force Awakens or in The Last Jedi, there is a seemingly throwaway line in TFA about how “Maybe Snoke should consider using a clone army”.

Why mention a clone army if you aren’t going to use it? Because it’s purely there to remind the audience that cloning is still a thing in the universe.

Here’s a link to everything we know about cloning from the EU
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cloning/Legends

Rey’s Parents

A smaller argument against Rey being a testtube clone-baby is the fact that she has memories of her parents. More specifically, she has memories of her parents LEAVING.

In the visions segment when she touches the Lightsaber we see Rey crying and asking some people not to leave, but they do so anyway in a pretty baller ship.

Now, this could be just her “junker” parents after selling her off for drinking money as Kylo Ren claims, but that just seems unlikely considering the size of the ship that is seen leaving Jakku.

Just a bunch of drunk junkers heading to an off-planet kegger

My theory to fill that gap is that Rey was either tossed out of the “program” because she didn’t show any Force sensitivity OR she was hidden by good people involved in the program after showing too much Force sensitivity.

If the latter, Rey could be the human version of the Deathstar’s “Exhaust Port” by a saboteur/insider.
If the former, she could be a discarded clone, which makes Kylo Ren’s statement about her parents a half truth.

Mirror of Desire

Now all of the above is based on mostly The Force Awakens, which could have been completely destroyed in The Last Jedi. Luckily, it was mostly “unaddressed” except for one major visual clue that solidifies my entire theory.

When Rey dives into the “Evil Plothole” to find the truth about her existence, what does the mirror show her?

The mirror shows her several copies of herself.

Not only that, but when she interacts with her images by making several HAND motions, the movement doesn’t start with her. It starts behind her, which could very well be another smarmy visual clue to SUPER CONFIRM my SUPER AWESOME theory.

Hopefully, this will be addressed in Episode IX although I don’t really care that much because The Last Jedi didn’t leave me wanting more, but OH WELL!